Spanish is a forgiving language in which it is possible to deflect blame for many transgressions by using the ‘accidental reflective construction’ which allows you to say – instead of pin-pointing the guilty finger with “I forgot the book“- the ambiguous and lightly sheepish shrug of “the book was forgotten“. You can see how useful this phrasing is for getting your teenagers to confess, and indeed essential to entire presidential administrations. Here are some responsibility-evading words that use this construction in Spanish. Think about their english equivalents.
Which brings us to the newest headline in Massachusetts.
When Sidney Perley wrote his History of Boxford in 1880, the first chapter included a description of Boxford’s flora and fauna. Viewed from the perspective of a 19th century rural agricultural community,
Perley stated, “The wolf and bear, which were so dangerous to our early settlers, have long since been forgotten. The wildcat, also a formidable enemy, has not been met with for a century. The moose, red deer, and beaver were numerous; but they, too have passed away. The red fox is still shot by the sportsman.
‘Been forgotten‘, ‘passed away‘, and ‘not been met for a century‘. Boxford has had an elegant supply of euphemisms for the past 200 years. Notice at no point do they actually use the words ‘eradicated, exterminated’, or even the less understood ‘extirpated’. It’s all very mysterious. For ‘SOME REASON’ (no one knows why) we know longer have bear or moose in Boxford, and for ‘SOME REASON’ (no one knows why) we have a lot more raccoons and crows than we used to.
Success has many parents, but failure and species depletion is apparently an orphan.
This trend continued into the 20th century. In the past few decades many animal species, including some of those specifically mentioned by Sidney Perley, have acclimated and even prospered in Boxford’s suburban environment.
Let’s not mention our trash cans are often unprotected buffet tables, or our cozy crawl spaces entire dens where a fox can happily keep her kits dry all winter. Let’s forget our increase in pests when all the predators are removed and the mysterious need for more rat poisons when all the raptors are killed. Don’t remind us that we killed hundreds of thousands of beavers in Massachusetts alone and made room for lots more beavers to move in.
For SOME REASON this just happens. No one knows why. Certainly not the author of this article.
Let’s pretend (and why not?) that you are a parent of energetic 7 year-old twins that you have to leave inside the house while you go mow the lawn. You tried to get them to come with you – talking them into raking big piles of leaves which they could leap in or pretend were monsters, but they are immersed in a mind-deadening cartoon about talking mason jars and hardly looked up when you opened the door. You are quite prepared to spend 20 minutes in the garden and come back to a chaotic pillow war where marsh mellows are used as ammunition. This isn’t your first rodeo. You know what to expect – lots of whining and name calling and ‘he started it’. But the lawn must be mowed or the neighbors will invite you for another miserable vegetarian BBQ to politely remind you, so you somberly slip out the door.
It’s a crisp fall day and the job is quickly done. Only when you come back inside, the house is immaculate. The TV is off. And the smell of waffles drifts from the kitchen where the children have a lovely brunch with unspilled juice and blueberries laid for you on the corner table. They are smiling and one of them even hugged you.
Now you know just how I felt when I read these stories.
Dear Johnnie: “I’m back, and I am hungry. As I fell each tree, the house value falls along the Oligarchy greenway west of Harvard.”
Yes, it is the beaver. How can we get rid of it? Do we take matters into our own hands (bang! bang!) or should the city fix it or the animals rights people get called in?
Anyway it looks very messy in our city to have just 2-foot-high stumps as a greenway. — Concerned
Dear Concerned: The city has a plan for beavers, and getting rid of them is not at the top of the list.
According to the city’s Standing Operating Procedure, “Longmont … maintains a wildlife management plan that strives to co-exist with urban wildlife whenever possible.”
The city’s primary concern when it comes to beavers is their ability to obstruct irrigation canals in town. When their dams threaten to lead to an overflow — which could lead to the flooding of homes — then the city will act to remove the obstruction.
The city also Longmont also has a concern for trees, as you do. According to Land Program administrator Dan Wolford, “the city, in the past has either wire wrapped or painted trees in this area to protect them from beaver, in particular those larger caliper native trees, worthy of saving.”
Removing a beaver would be a last resort, and is addressed in the SOP document.
Good lord, have I died and gone to heaven? Is this the newspaper of the angels? Where is this magical place called Longmont? Turns out its 28 miles from Sherri Tippie’s front door, so I’m guessing they have had LOTS of help getting this smart. In the meantime we should just pause and appreciate that this is the very first historic moment where I have EVER read about a city “painting trees” in response to chewing. I’m sure they mean ‘painting mixed with sand’ and I couldn’t be happier. Sherri invented that technique and was the first to publish it. Thanks Sherri!
Concerned, I’m sure you know that “bang! bang!” is not found in the city’s wildlife management plan. Even mention of “removal” comes with a reminder that “trapping and removal of an animal typically creates a ‘vacuum’ at the capture site, which in most cases is quickly filled by another animal of the same species.”
Did you just get goosebumps? I sure did. There’s more where that came from…
Score one for Whistler’s beaver population. A willow tree at Alpha Lake Park is now on its side, chewed over by one or more beavers living in the area.
The tree near the lake edge had a sign on it informing park visitors the Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW) decided to let the beavers do with the tree as they see fit, as it was beyond repair. Sometime next year another tree will be planted in the area to replace the felled willow.
According to biologist Bob Brett with the Whistler Naturalists, beavers are a native species to the region. He considers them the symbol of Whistler’s valley bottom.
“I think beavers are fantastic,” said Brett after learning about the slow destruction of the lakeside willow at Alpha Lake.
A city biologist excited about beavers? Public works crews wrapping trees with wire? Hand me my smelling salts. I feel an attack of the vapors coming on! 1500 miles away from Sherri Tippie but not that far from Vancouver and our friends at Fur-bearer defenders.
The RMOW communications department also said “beaver deceivers” — defined as anything that prevents beavers from blocking culverts — were also installed in culverts at Hillcrest Drive and in Alta Vista to prevent beavers from damming the culverts.
And you thought you were thankful yesterday! Now let’s overdose on more good news from Mike Callahan about his salmon adapted flow devices in Sonomish, Washington.
Sonomish Salmon Passage Success!
I have great news! I recently returned from Snohomish County, WA and observed that our prototype Flexible Pond Levelers Fishways (now called Snohomish Pond Levelers) were successful at passing adult coho salmon upstream. I think this is very exciting!
This means that when road culverts, etc. on salmon producing streams require protection from beaver damming we can opt to utilize flow devices rather than traditional beaver trapping and dam removal. This experiment is an extremely promising beginning and great news for salmon, beavers and us all! With a single, relatively inexpensive flow device we can increase the populations of two keystone species! The implications are tremendous.
I hope to share this research at the 32nd Annual Salmonid Restoration Conference in Santa Barbara, CA in March. In the meantime please spread the word. We need to get the word out that adult salmon migration can now be facilitated rather than impeded by using flow devices.
Thanks and congratulations to my Team Snohomish partners without whom this research project would not have been possible, especially Jake Jacobson, Michael Rustay, Ben Dittbrenner, and Ted Parker. A big thank you also to the Animal Welfare Institute whose grant largely funded this research project.
Sometimes you really get the feeling that we are on a team of smart, ecologically minded beaver believers scattered across the northern hemisphere. And sometimes it even seems like we’re winning!
You are probably very busy today, so I will wish you happy thanksgiving with a reminder of some of our beaver joys this year to reflect on. Count your blessings and appreciate family members while you get the job done!
Things to be-aver thankful for 2013. Each of the headings is a link to the column about this event if you need reminding!
Brad Herbert of AV8-ORR Helicopter Services waits to send off a roughly-1,000-pound load of branches and brush to be dropped on a section of Bolton Creek on Nov. 14, at the Garrett Ranch near Casper. The department has teamed with rancher Pete Garrett in an effort to stabilize the creek and reduce sediment by providing beavers with enough natural material to build dams.
Keith Schoup and Pete Garrett are an unusual duo. Schoup is a habitat biologist for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. Garrett is a rancher outside of Casper. Historically, practitioners in their respective fields have seldom seen eye-to-eye. But the two struck up a working relationship in the early 1990s and have been performing experimental projects to improve environments for wild species and livestock ever since.
Their latest project had two objectives: keeping the North Platte River healthy and improving the quality of grazing lands on Garrett’s ranch by building dams made of debris from Winter Storm Atlas.
By using a helicopter, beavers and 50 tons of tree debris left in the wake of the October snowstorms, the duo is hoping to transform the bare riparian habitat along Bolton Creek into terrain studded with cottonwood trees, grass and a thriving beaver population. The synergy of effects should reduce erosion in the creek, block sediment from the North Platte and keep fish populations healthy.
This is so close to being a good story. Ranchers and biologists partnering with beavers to restore a creek in the back country. Resources being invested to expand the beaver population rather than deplete it. It is situated so closely beside actual ‘good news’ that lots of ill-informed people might not recognize how woefully misguided it actually is. Like a library located next to a strip joint. Or a teen pregnancy clinic right beside a all-night Chevy drive in. This gets a lot of things right – but many more wrong.
The city was quick to oblige when Game and Fish asked if it could remove some of the animals from the area, she said. “We’re in an urban area, we’re not going back to the wilderness,” Martinez said. “There are things we can do to cohabitate.”
First of all, if you make something move out, you’re not co-habitating with it. (Look it up). Obviously they got rid of a problem, so they were happy to help out. All they had to do was scoop up some of those rats with a snare, pile them into a big net which we could fly by helicopter into an empty field, and then drop them into the water. Of course we didn’t relocate families together. Why do you ask? If a bunch of strange beavers kill each other for territory, die from internal bleeding or starve to death without families, its still a win win for us.
For the project to be successful, Schoup and Garrett are hoping Mother Nature will take its course. Over time a line of beaver dams should form and allow for slower water flows in the creek that will help to reduce sediment levels in the North Platte. The dams should also help to periodically flood the creek’s riparian habitat.
The city of Casper organized piles of the debris at the compost center. Game and Fish trucks picked up the material and drove it to Garrett’s land off Wyoming Highway 487. “It was great to see everybody work together,” said Sean Orszulak, superintendent of solid waste for the city.
In the second week of November, a helicopter dumped hundreds of 1,500-pound loads of branches along the carved banks of Bolton Creek. The wood will serve as the foundations for the dams and food for a population of beavers introduced to the area by Game and Fish.
No word yet on what these dumped engineers are supposed to EAT after their days of labor. I guess they are welcome to gnaw the bark off that pile of old sticks and roots if they wish. But of course its 38 degrees in Wyoming today, so that tiny creek will be frozen in a fortnight. I wonder what they’ll eat then?
Never mind. The relocated beavers may starve. But the mountain lions, wolves, bobcats and coyotes will live like kings!
So sometimes I open my eyes and email and I have no idea what beaver misfortune I will be writing about that day. And sometimes my inbox has a present all shiny with a red bow on top just for me. This morning it was a ‘good job’ email from John Hadidian, the senior scientist at the Humane Society, who had just read through his new issue of Human-Wildlife Interaction and seen my commentary. Gallant man that he is, he offered to scan it for me since it will be a while before its published online. Now it is followed by the two page whining rebuttal of the researchers I challenged but we’ll talk about that later. Today let’s just enjoy ourselves, shall we?
Consider this entire article a warning shot across the beaver-trapping bow and a irresistible recommendation for humane beaver management everywhere! (10 year old data, sheesh!) Honestly, what I personally am proudest of about this article is that it actually uses my education instead of dragging it shamefully along behind like the tin cans tied to a ‘just graduated’ car.
Non-respondent bias? Oh snap! I never thought I’d be able to use those words again after graduate school. Now I want to say it all the time! And thank the hard work research and design stats teacher who got the concept through my thick head. I actually hated hated hated math, and (shh) never did the homework. But I loved statistics and calculated every single formula by hand. Don’t ask me why. It made perfect sense to my way of thinking, where as many people (including my brilliant husband) loved math and failed miserably at statistics. Go figure. I know by now you’re probably thinking ‘doesn’t this woman EVER talk about anything besides herself? So this is the part about you.
Yes, the heroic actions of town-ful of adults and children is what forced Martinez back to the drawing table and allowed Skip Lisle to be hired in the first place. When the people lead, the leaders will follow. (Except Janet Kennedy of course, but she’s gone.) There were so many young people who grew up with this story. I just got a call this weekend from a freshman at UCSC who was a middle schooler when the story started and wanted to write a paper on how the Martinez beavers improved our creek.
Cue the rousing anthem and the unfurling flag in the background! I just got goosebumps! Let me say that I truly believe only a hybrid psychologist-beaver advocate could have written this entire article in four tight paragraphs. I know I mostly coast along with insulting the hygiene and IQ of folks who kill beavers much of the time, but I’m really proud of this. Let’s all remember:
I pledge allegiance to the streams,and the beaver ponds of America.And to the renewal for which they standOne river, underground, irreplaceable,With habitat and wetlands for all.
Which brings us to the newest headline in Massachusetts.
Score one for Whistler’s beaver population. A willow tree at Alpha Lake Park is now on its side, chewed over by one or more beavers living in the area.
No word yet on what these dumped engineers are supposed to EAT after their days of labor. I guess they are welcome to gnaw the bark off that pile of old sticks and roots if they wish. But of course its 38 degrees in Wyoming today, so that tiny creek will be frozen in a fortnight. I wonder what they’ll eat then?
